1 Sept 1999

Hi to all:
    I can beat everyone for strange places to find shells (unfortunately this
is not preserved in the usual museum).  One day the local sheriff's
department asked me to identify a living unionid inside of a human skull
commercial fishermen pulled up in their nets in the Mississippi River, near
La Crosse, Wisconsin (just a few miles from my house; imagine what my husband
thought when he came home and saw a skull on the kitchen table!).   I have
pictures of the occasion.
     It was a Pyganodon (formerly Anodonta) grandis corpulenta (Cooper 1834),
 probably 3-4 years old, a good 3 inches long (obviously couldn't measure or
age it exactly).  They wanted to know how old the mussel was so they could
determine how long skull had been in the water (local govenrment biologists
unable to ID and age mussel).  Obviously,  unionid got inside when smaller
than any opening in an adult skull.  Finally state crime lab decided that
skull was probably that of an early Native American, so there was no
possibility of a more recent death from unknown causes.   Skull did look like
it had been in the water for a long time.
Marian E Havlik
Malacological Consultants
1603 Mississippi Street
La Crosse, WI 54601-4969
email: [log in to unmask]
Phone/Fax: 608-782-7958